The Vocations Committee mission is to promote an increase in religious vocations. We need more men to answer the call to the Priesthood, more women to say yes to the religious life, and an increase in Deacons. We need more people living the sacramental life of marriage as well as single consecrated men and women. These are all vocations to live a life of holiness following the will of God. To help foster these vocations our committee promotes the following activities:

Vocations Icons – The Vocations Icons travel weekly from home to home. While in each home, parishioners petition God for more vocations to the Priesthood and Consecrated Life from our parish and the Archdiocese.

The 31 Club – Each member of the club is asked to attend Mass on the same date each month and pray for an increase in religious vocations.

Parish Bulletin Inserts – Each quarter of the year, the vocations committee places an insert in the weekly bulletin highlighting the vocation of a consecrated person, priest, deacon or seminarian. By reading about God’s call in the lives of others we hope to help every person discern God’s call in his or her own life.

Seminarian Communication – Throughout the year we remember our parish seminarians with birthday cards and Christmas and Easter Mass Cards. We also send them graduation cards to recognize and celebrate their accomplishments.

Weekly Adoration – Each Thursday after the 5:30 PM Mass there is an hour of Eucharistic Adoration for the increase of vocations to the Priesthood, Permanent Diaconate and Consecrated Life.

Special Vocation Weekends – Other activities that we promote throughout the year include Priesthood Sunday, National Vocations Awareness Week and the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.

College Connections for Catholics - (CCC) is a new program of the U.S. Council of Serra International requiring cooperative effort between local Serra Clubs and parishes. To counter the trend of young people falling away from their Catholic faith during their college years, the CCC program provides to high school graduating seniors some material on campus ministry programs in their selected college/university. To achieve the CCC goals requires telephoning by local Serra Club members to parents/students from name lists obtained from either Catholic high schools or their parish. The call is to give the parent CCC information and in return obtain the name and address of the college the student plans to attend so the U.S. Council can mail the specific campus ministry information prior to the students going off to pursue their college education.

This program was developed after a study exploring Catholic campus ministry confirmed that students active in campus ministry attended Mass more often, donated more to their parishes later in life, became leaders in their parishes and were more likely to consider a vocation to the priesthood and/or religious life.